And can trustworthy, and at the same time competent, men be found to form the nucleus of a new Highland peasantry in the manner indicated? Well, I have the authority of Mr. Mackay, the chamberlain or factor for the island of Lewis, that from thence alone they could send two thousand couples, fine, well-brought-up, industrious young men and young women, at present unmarried, to help to repopulate the mainland. In Lewis the population have not been cleared. They have, under comparatively favourable circumstances, been allowed to increase and multiply until the island is at last in danger of over-population. We do not want to lessen our crofts in the slightest degree, but we want an outlet for our surplus population,' says Mr. Mackay; 'give us sites on the mainland, and we will give you people.'

Now I would ask my readers to look at a map of Scotland, and contrast the tiny island of Lewis with the adjacent large county of Sutherland. In 1831 the population of the latter was 25,518, of the former 14,610. But in 1881 the county had only 23,370, while Lewis maintained 25,487. And in that year that small island gave 1,200 men to the Naval Reserve and about 300 men to the Militia. Now I assert that there is no good reason why Sutherlandshire and the rest of the Highlands should not support as dense a population as the island of Lewis. In some localities we should have a semi-fishing, semi-farming population, in others the small crofter class proper, such as By can support, and in others the larger tenants.

The Prime Minister a week or two ago, in announcing to the House of Commons the failure of the Conference on Egyptian affairs, declared that, if the Powers had agreed to the English proposals, the Government would not have hesitated to pledge the credit of this country for the relief of the Egyptian fellah, to the extent, as we know, of eight millions sterling. Eight millions to the Egyptian fellah! Why, much less than half that sum would settle the Highland difficulty; would redress the wrongs of the past, so far as they can be redressed; would lay the foundation of a fine, hardy, and useful peasantry, at a time when our population is centring in the large towns to a dangerous degree; would people the now silent straths and glens; and for security we should have, not impoverished and bankrupt Egypt, but the land of our own country! The crofters who require relief do not number, according to the Royal Commission, more than 40,000 families, and if ten per cent. of these were provided for, it would relieve the pressure to a sufficient degree in the congested localities. Five millions would provide for 4,000 families on the scale I have described. But they would not all require such large crofts as I calculated for, and many of them would possess capital, more or less, of their own. Five millions, then, would not only do what is required, but probably would provide the harbours and other works as well which the Commission have recommended.

It may be said, Why advance five millions to the Highlanders

more than to other sections of the general population? Well, I should have thought that the dismal array of facts detailed in the opening pages of this paper would be sufficient reply; but there is another and perhaps more cogent answer. It is not on the Highlanders that the money would be spent, but on the Highlands, to save that portion of the kingdom from ruin. There is no reason why any subject of Her Majesty should not apply for one of the new peasant sites, provided he shows himself to be a suitable candidate.

The figures I have given above are estimates-as I have said, they will bear investigation, but still they are only estimates. I am glad to be able to support them from actual statistics compiled on a club farm which some years ago was dealt with by the proprietor as I propose that By should be dealt with. When Sir Alexander Matheson, in 1845, purchased the farm of Ardross, in Ross-shire, it was occupied by one tenant, paying a rent of 935l. The highest portion of the ground was turned into a deer forest, the remainder was let to 30 small tenants. He spent on improvements and in reclaiming moorland 27,800l.; but his rent is now increased to a sum that yields a return of over four per cent. on the money invested. When he purchased the property, the total population did not reach 150. There are now over 150 children in the Ardross school. A short time ago I visited the club farm of Strath Usdale, on that gentleman's property, his factor, Mr. Maclean of Ardross, kindly assisting me in my interview with the half-dozen crofters that twenty years before were there established. Driving up by the banks of the beautiful Alness river, and through the woods and across the broad acres of cultivated fields that thirty years since, before the advent of that magician Capital, were mere wild stretches of barren moorland, we reached the site of the township, which, as Mr. Maclean proudly boasts, is a model for the Highlands. There we found the crofters assembled, six stalwart, intelligent and well-educated men. We entered one of their houses, and, thatch-roofed as it was, found ourselves in a carpeted room, with books and the magazines of the period on the table. Proceeding to the purpose of our visit, we found that our hosts possessed on an average about thirty acres each of arable land, and they had among them 8,000 acres of moorland as a club grazing ground, supporting about 1,300 sheep and 50 head of cattle. Fifty years ago there were 23 families on the ground, the traces of whose houses still remain; but they were sent away at the time of the clearances. To restore to cultivation the ground which these men had occupied cost about 5l. per acre. 'And there are thousands of acres like that in the Highlands,' one of the men remarked. As rent they pay 2301., or an average each of 381. The proprietor, when they took up the ground, advanced them money to build their houses, to purchase stock, and to bring the land into cultivation, and in a few years they paid back the whole amount and five per cent. interest.

15,000l. represents the cost of the property, including original purchase-money, and on this the rent received from the crofters and the value of the grouse-shooting yields a return of 3.25 per cent. One of the crofters represents the others, and does all the management for 50l. per annum.

Now, where in the Western States of America are men better off than these six crofters, who for twenty years have been settled in this Highland strath, that for thirty years previously was given over to solitude? They are happier than if they had emigrated, for they are living in their native country with their dear native heather around them. If an advance from the national purse be refused, it ought at least to be rendered possible for capitalists to invest their money as Sir Alexander Matheson invested his in Strath Usdale. At present the law of entail and the poverty of most of the landlords stand in the way—even if men were found to accept the trouble and risk of starting club farms for mere philanthropy and three per cent. Unless that is done as a Government work, I fear it will never be done at all. But, say the Royal Commissioners

To suffer the crofting class to be obliterated or to leave them in their present depressed circumstances, if by any justifiable contrivance their condition can be improved, would be to cast away the agencies and opportunities for a social experiment connected with the land of no common interest. The crofting and cottar population of the Highlands and Islands, small though it be, is a nursery of good workers and good citizens for the whole empire. In this respect the stock is exceptionally valuable. By sound physical constitution, native intelligence, and good moral training, it is particularly fitted to recruit the people of our industrial centres, who without such help from wholesome sources in rural districts would degenerate under the influences of bad lodging, unhealthy occupations, and enervating habits. It cannot be indifferent to the whole nation, constituted as the nation now is, to possess within its borders a people hardy, skilful, intelligent, and prolific, as an ever-flowing fountain of renovating life.

There is another alternative-and it is one which the people of the Highlands are already adopting. It is the alternative alluded to in the opening pages of this article.

Is it

The Whigs have never done much for the Highlands. It was Whig doctrinaires who defended and Whig landlords principally who carried out the clearances; while the leading Whig newspaper of the South of Scotland is even now our most inveterate enemy. possible that the Tories may come to our assistance? Let them put forward candidates for the northern counties, and let the party be pledged to bring in a suitable Crofters' Relief Bill, and we will guarantee them the capture of all the existing Whig seats in the North of Scotland! Otherwise, when the Franchise Bill shall have passed, those constituencies will become the prey of the extreme Radicals, who will preach to them the doctrine of confiscation-a dangerous doctrine surely, if a significant one, for Highlanders to listen to.

J. A. CAMERON.

CHATTER versus WORK IN PARLIAMENT.

IMPORTANT as are various subjects which are at present exciting the public mind, there is one that lies behind them that is not less serious. The authority which Parliament is to wield is at least as vital a point as the manner in which that Parliament is to be chosen. The right to vote at Parliamentary elections would be a very doubtful privilege if the Parliament, when elected, found itself unable to give effect to the will of its constituents.

That this is the case at present, the story of the present House of Commons abundantly demonstrates. Granted that exceptional circumstances have interfered with the progress of legislation, they are certainly not sufficient to account for the utter helplessness of the House of Commons to do its proper work. It is not merely that great constitutional changes are obstinately contested; but even measures which have no relation to party, and which are not only of admitted utility but of positive necessity, are opposed with the same pertinacity and the same wanton determination to obstruct.

Indeed, it is the practical reforms which suffer most. On behalf of a Reform Bill a popular feeling can be excited before which this unpatriotic and spiteful opposition, whose raison d'être is to do mischief, or rather to hinder good, succumbs. But it is impossible to arouse this feeling in relation to measures which, however necessary, are not of a kind to touch the popular imagination; and therefore these are systematically obstructed at every stage, and abuses are allowed to live on, because the methods of Parliamentary procedure are based on the assumption that the House of Commons will be composed of gentlemen, and are unequal to the strain put upon them when gentlemanly feelings and instincts are treated as obsolete traditions of a former age.

By the strict letter of the law a few men are able to hold a Government at bay, even though it have at its back a powerful and united majority. The power has always been dormant, and like a good many other prerogatives, has been allowed to exist on the understood condition that it should not be employed. It does not need five minutes' consideration to show that, if every member of Parliament insisted on his abstract right to speak on every stage of every measure, no Bill would reach its third reading. But the right of each individual representative is not limited even to the discussion of Bills or even of questions raised in the form of resolutions with set debate. He is a guardian of the privileges of the people against usurpations of the Crown, or such encroachments as the Crown might

by the interposition of its authority be able to prevent, and in this capacity he may rake up any floating rumour which finds its way into the newspapers, and waste the time of Parliament by thrusting it in the path of national business. No argument is necessary to show that any extensive use of these traditional privileges must render legislation impossible. As a matter of fact, the use of these forms as obstructive instruments has been reduced to an art, and a few men have succeeded, if not in absolutely paralysing the action of Parliament, at all events in reducing it to a condition of feebleness which is pitiable. In England obstruction has become the instrument of the counter-revolution. The nation may desire certain measures, but a handful of men, having learned a lesson from Irish Nationalists, will baffle the national will by their ingenious tactics. How far men of a higher status are to blame for the success of those who seem to be destitute alike of proper respect for Parliament and of a sense of their own utter insignificance is a question that need not be discussed now. Here, at all events, is the evil, and it needs only to be understood in order to satisfy all reasonable men that an immediate and drastic cure is essential to the maintenance of representative government in the country.

Some idea of the magnitude of the evil may be formed from a few curious and suggestive statistics as to the talk of the session of 1883. For our immediate purpose it is not necessary to take into account the speeches of the two front benches, whose members occupy an exceptional position. This is especially true of the Ministry, who are forced to speak by the questions which are incessantly showered upon them. For a wholly different reason the followers of Mr. Parnell may be left out of consideration. They avow their desire to bring Parliament into contempt; and it would be a waste of time to search for evidence to convict them of an offence which they ostentatiously confess, and in which they glory. Having eliminated these classes we find, by reference to the Sessional Index of Hansard, that there were altogether 9,515 speeches (including under this term all kinds of questions and remarks) made in the course of the session. Out of 321 available Liberal speakers 219, or 68 per cent., actually spoke, while, on the other side, out of 221 there were 149, or 67 per cent.; but while the latter and smaller number spoke 4,956 times, being an average of 33.2, the former spoke only 4,557 times, or an average of 20.5 for each speaker.